So, ah, it's time to chill out and get ready for a mediocre q, a live stream if you're old enough grab yourself your favorite adult beverage and if you're not stick with apple juice, put your feet up and relax. If you have any questions feel free to ask them in the chat and now, let's queue up the intro music, so yo. So i don't know: what's going on my computer decided to update like randomly right as i was going, live and then um my wife came home and uh. She took the dog from me who was sleeping peacefully on my floor like really peacefully down here, and she decided to take him out into the living room and fill his little kong, which is like a little chewing thing with warm peanut butter.

Okay, which is cool because you know, gives the dog something to do, but don't ever put warm peanut butter in a kong that you're gon na give to your dog. Okay, because i went out there to go. Do something and my dog is covered in peanut butter. Mind you he's currently sitting in my lap covered in peanut butter.

Therefore i am covered in peanut butter and he smells like peanut butter, but he's happy. So that's a plus. You only put cold peanut butter in a kong, not warm peanut butter because it gets everywhere. This little guy is covered in peanut butter right now, yeah yeah smells like peanut butter and all that, but he's my little buddy right here.

This is my buddy luke. So he's super chill all right. He's gon na go off to my daughter and i'm gon na. Do a stream now so now it's it's been fun with the little guy he's super cool, little dude and uh all kinds of fun, ups and downs, and it's like having a baby again.

It really is because you're up two times a night, sometimes three times a night to take them to the bathroom. You know all that good stuff, so sure yeah, it's definitely a fun one. For the million people that are gon na ask. He is a silver labrador.

Retriever so um it's that that whatever color they do something in the breeding or something like that. I don't know some voodoo magic stuff. I guess there's a bunch of controversy about those too, but whatever dude he's a cool dog. You know it is what it is.

So um, i hope you guys are all doing well, we got all kinds of cool stuff to talk about tonight. Got lots of people in the chat right now. There's a lot of people in here. Do me a favor if you guys are in here uh.

Do me a favor and smash. The like button looks like currently right now we have about 120 people. We only have 33 likes um. Please smash.

The like button help youtube to recognize that i'm actually here and doing something their numbers and things are all kind of wonky these days. So anything we can do will help out the stream. I really appreciate it: okay, um as usual, i got a bunch of stuff. I want to talk about if you guys have questions and things that you want me to address.

Do me a favor and throw them in caps lock in the chat and that'll help me to see them. I can't always get to everything guys there's a lot of stuff going on in these streams. It's really hard to get to it all. So do me a favor and um.

If i miss something, if i don't answer your question feel free to send me an email to hvacr videos gmail.com. So today i got off work a little bit early. I shouldn't say a bit early. I started at four in the morning, so i worked a normal day, but i got off early er than usual right, um, and so i was in here going through and what i usually do is if i miss questions i'll, go through and i'll find them, and Then i'll throw them into the co into the stuff for the next week.

You know, and sometimes you guys send me um. You know questions that i have to address at the moment. Sometimes i do sometimes i don't. It just depends.

Okay, so let's see what else we got in here um, let me see all right, so i want to start off because i've got this question like two times last week. Okay, so i want to give a basic introduction about myself. Many of you guys have probably been watching the stream for quite a while. You probably know me, okay, but obviously my name is chris.

I am an hvacr service technician. I co-own a small business here in southern california, with my father and uh. I actually started working for my father as a kid and then now we run the business together. Okay, i started making these youtube videos as like a a training method or training aid for my own employees, um i've said this a bunch of times.

I made some mistakes and i lost three. I i forget. I forget i've told this so many times. I already forget how many it was.

It was three or four employees. At the same time, i think it was three. Maybe it's four, i don't know, but it was. It was good, nine years or no not nine years ago, but anyways anyways.

I started making these videos as like a training aid, because i found myself having to hire experienced technicians that just weren't experienced in the way that i do things or the way that we run our business. So i started making these videos as a you know. Instead of spending two hours in the shop in the morning telling stories you know get to show them on video, never really planned on making them public. But here we are now i decided to do it and you know much apprehension, but it's been amazing.

The support that i get from you guys, okay, so thank you so very much um. So i started working for my dad. When i was a little kid i mean i still run into people these days. I have uh kitchen staff and managers of restaurants and stuff that remember me when i was a little kid sitting on my dad's bucket uh, i used to hold this flashlight and not very well.

If any of you guys know what i'm talking about my dad used to have a 4 cell d or 4d cell maglite right, so it held 4d batteries and uh as a little kid. If you can picture how heavy that is and how cool as a five six year old, it is to see that light go all over the place, but it wasn't cool for my dad, because i can remember him saying god: damn it christopher hold that light straight. I'm trying to work here, you know, and it's like, and here i am oh yeah, i'm interested look, there's a there's something you know. I was just like a little kid getting all interested in it.

Um off and on worked with my dad, i used to he used to pick me up because my parents were separated. He used to pick me up from my mom's house after school and then we would run a few calls on the way to his house and then we would go home and you know i just kind of grew up doing that kind of stuff learning. A lot of stuff from my dad, i learned everything from my dad. Everything that i am today is because of my dad now he didn't necessarily teach me all the knowledge, but he gave me the tools to find the knowledge, okay and that's a really important thing.

So um hello to everybody in the chat. I see you guys, i'm just not paying attention to it right now, because i'm on a tangent, okay, so um, you know working with my dad. I used to work with some of his employees and we used to work. The summer times, because, obviously, when i was out of school i'd, go to work full time.

There was probably some labor laws being violated, but i can remember uh in junior high working the summers with some of the employees of my dad's and i was always doing the grunt work. I would change filters on the roof hose off. Condensers change, swamp, cooler, pads change belts, that's what i always used to do. So i was always upstairs and i hated it.

I absolutely hated it, but i was making twenty dollars a day right and as a 12 year old or what is that? Not probably not even yeah, maybe like 11 12 year old as an 11 or 12 year old, making 20 a day and at the end of the summer having a couple hundred bucks. That was a really cool thing. It was awesome right, um flash forward to now like, could you imagine being paid 20 a day right? I know some of you guys older than me. Probably remember some weird things like that and it's it's pretty cool it's.

It was a learning experience. But what was interesting was because i was working on the roof all the time in southern california, heat 115, sometimes 120 degree days right. That was extreme, but usually 115 110. I hated it.

I absolutely hated it at that stage in my life because i was doing all the horrible stuff right. I wasn't really retaining any fundamentals or anything, but i just it was. It was kind of like go up on the roof change. The swamp, cooler pads drain, the swamp cooler blow the drains out that kind of stuff right.

So i told my dad, you know no hard feelings, but i was like dad. I don't like doing this. I don't want to do this anymore. Okay, so a couple years through high school working, odd jobs, uh, my first job was at a sandwich shop.

My second job was at carl's jr, the the hamburger place. I was the drive-thru guy right. Welcome to carl's jr. Would you like to try our guacamole bacon cheeseburger today see the guacamole bacon cheeseburger had just come out when i was working at carl's jr and what was it? Would you like to go big on that right because go big was their thing um i used to uh the manager of the carl's jr that i used to work on or work at would make us change the stickers on the back of the cookies, because you Had an expiration date on the back of the cookies right and so you'd have to peel off the sticker and put on a new sticker because they weren't going to throw away cookies.

Okay, they had to replace them now, of course, carl's jr. That was a sole manager that wasn't carl's jr doing that, i'm you know got to cover my bases here. It wasn't them. It was a manager that was doing things incorrectly right got to cover it all, but um went to work for a body shop out of high school working on cars and then, while i was in high school, i was taking auto shop class or body shop, auto Collision actually so that was kind of cool, because my senior year in high school, i actually never even went to school half the time because i had had all my classes taken care of, but the school wouldn't.

Let me like go for just two classes, so they made me fill the spots, so i filled them with auto collision repetitively over and over right. So i had like three periods of auto collision and because i worked at a body shop after school, my teacher would just sign me off so half the time i wouldn't even go to school. I would just go to work because it was like, whatever you know, money um that lasted until about a year after high school, and i came to work for my dad full time. I decided you know what i don't want to work on cars anymore.

I want to do this so uh in 2002, the beginning of the year, i came to work uh doing this, and here we are now it's been a roller coaster. I've made lots of mistakes. I've learned everything um. You know based off of the skills that my dad gave me i made uh, you know broke a lot of stuff, i fixed a lot of stuff and - and you know, um, someone had made a comment, and i wanted to address this, and this was a very Nice comment and don't take this the wrong way: the guy that sent this comment, but he sent me an email today and he says he's seen a few times or uh.

He said uh jokingly and probably was sarcasm, but he said i'm a refrigeration, god. Okay and again, i appreciate the the compliment. Okay, but i am not a refrigeration god. Okay, i am just a normal guy that likes to look into things and likes to try to figure things out.

I have made a lot of mistakes and i know there are many other people, much smarter than i okay. I know that there's a lot of you guys out there that do this. That might be a little bit nervous. I encourage you guys: okay, pick up a camera and start filming it if you can okay, because there's limitations to all that stuff, but um anyways.

That's me: that's who i am i'm just a normal dude that likes to uh, take videos and put them on the internet. Okay, all right! So i'm gon na take a look at the chat, real, quick and then we're gon na go through some things that i have on my list. So um does auto body paint smell, uh yeah smells horrible um, let's see what else uh. Yes, there is still so much to learn.

I'm always learning uh. Prime time said we are not able to learn everything, there's still so much to learn and that's the cool thing about this industry guys it's. It's really interesting because it's not like you're just working on the same thing every day now granted there might be some times where it seems repetitive, but technology is always changing. There's new flavors of refrigerant, it seems like weekly right there's new different things coming out: new technology, new rules, new regulations, new stuff, and it means that we have to constantly evolve right if you're, a good, hvacr service, technician - and you know your stuff - and you can Fix things you will be employed for life.

Okay, now, if you're a jerk or you're a punk or you don't do things right, then of course you might lose your job. But if you are a good technician with skills, you have a career for life, hvac r right for those that are watching right now: hvacr, heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration is a great trade. Okay, there's all different facets of the trade that we can go into. We can do restaurant service, like i do.

I specialize in restaurant, refrigeration and air conditioning okay, you can go heavy industrial working on ammonia systems and giant industrial air conditioning systems. You can go commercial refrigeration, working on supermarkets, rack systems, parallel, rack systems, all kinds of cool stuff right. You can go strictly air conditioning residential air conditioning. You can get into all different sectors and with each of those things that i named there's little niches in every one of those too.

Okay, are you a person that is afraid of heights? There's things you can do in this trade, if you're afraid of heights? Okay, yeah you're going to be limited, but there's things you can do you can get an institution type job. You know, um. Are you a people person? Well, you can get a front-end service business or you can go work for a front end operator company right where you're actually dealing with customers. You can go on the commercial side where you don't deal with customers as much you can go residential.

This is a great trade. It will provide for you and your family if you are a competent technician that understands that you always have to keep learning. Okay, we all all just have to keep learning. I was just having a conversation with my buddy brett wetzel from the advanced refrigeration podcast.

He called me just before, and we were just talking about different things like different ideas and just talking about problems and things that are happening and it's cool, because there's a camaraderie that happens in this trade once you get to notice people right. So it's really really cool. If you guys haven't already go check out the advanced refrigeration podcast, you can find it on all the different app stores where you can find podcasts brett wetzel, kevin compass. They do rack refrigeration, they do supermarket refrigeration and it's really really cool because they found something that they can share their knowledge on right, a platform and they're doing great with it there's a bunch of different people out here we got my buddies on the hvac overtime Channel with myself adam joe and bill, we all have different youtube channels.

Some of us post regularly. Some of us hasn't posted in a while bill's been posting, it's been a while, but he started posting again. You guys should check that out too. Okay um there's.

There's lots of great content on youtube understand something though right. There's nobody out there saying you're a good service technician. Therefore, you can make videos right. There's nobody saying you're a bad service technician.

Therefore, you can't make videos so keep that in mind right. There is some bad information out there, but you can usually figure out who that is just by going to the comments. Sections right, if there's no comments on their videos, they're deleting them for a reason: okay, but you can usually watch and you could say this doesn't quite seem right. Okay, there's lots of great content on youtube and we need more.

So i encourage everybody out there. If you guys have an interest in it, find a space start, posting stuff understand, you're, not going to explode with viewers and all that different stuff. But hey. You know what i don't take this the wrong way, i'm not flexing or anything, and maybe there's a better way.

I can say this, but i never planned on any of this stuff. I never planned on a platform turning into what it has. I just started making videos for my employees. I shared them and it slowly grew and grew and grew, and it took time to get to the point that i'm at right now and there's people that are well beyond me too.

Right. There's a lot of amazing content out there and there's a lot of people that like to consume that content so check it out, support the other channels. If you guys watch other channels leave them comments, leave them feedback. If you know how youtube works, youtube is looking for interaction.

Right youtube is a business. They want to make money, so they want you to watch commercials. They want you to watch different things because youtube sells those spots right, so youtube allows us a platform to put our videos on and they throw commercials in the videos. Okay, because they're a business google is there to make money.

Okay, whether you like them or not. That's what they're there for okay, so we put our content up, they throw commercials on it. They kick back a little bit of that commercial revenue to the content creators once you've reached a certain level. Trust me they don't kick at all.

It's a very small percentage. Usually it's about 30 percent or something like that of the revenue, but you know what support any channels that you guys watch. I encourage you guys if you it doesn't matter if it's hvac or anything leave a heart leave a thumbs up. Leave a comment.

Do anything you can to support any channels that you watch and let them know that you're there, because we're always looking for feedback? Okay. So again, thanks so much for coming in here all right, we've got lots of great stuff to talk about so remember. If you got questions and comments, put them in caps, lock looks like the chat's rolling past right now, so it's going to be hard for me to catch up with all of them, but all right, let's see um. If you have too much refrigerant, you end up shopping at value testers.

You got me on that. One, the 98 deville! You got me value, testas! That's right! If you, if you watch, if you huff enough refrigerant, you will end up shopping at value. That's right! All! Right and and that's just po - that's just having fun, i'm not making you know not being negative about anybody. Everybody has a little cork, i'm certain people will make fun of me too, and it's all good.

I i love criticism. I love feedback. You know there's some people out there that will make like funny memes of things that i do and then they send them to me and i think they're great, i think, they're funny as long as you're not being a jerk, i'm all for that stuff, i'm all For interaction and and people having fun with this stuff, okay, um, how many turns out on a sporland txv for a factory setting starting point: matt? Okay, so a sporland txv and furthermore, an emerson, txv or any of those are typically going to be in the midpoint. Okay is going to be the factory set point um, so what you want to do, if you want to find out, like let's say, someone's, been cranking on a valve and it's just way out of adjustment.

What you want to do, obviously, with the system off, you want to be careful with the system on doing this. Is you want to exercise that valve in and out? Okay? So what you do is run the valve all the way in okay and then run the valve all the way out and count how many turns it took to get from in to out until it won't turn okay or until it's done, you don't want to just Sit there and crank on it right count. How many turns it is divide that in half and run it in those half turns if that makes sense, okay and then that's typically the starting point: that's the midpoint and then from there let the system get turned back on, let it stabilize out check it out And then adjust accordingly, you typically when you're adjusting an expansion valve you do not want to make big turns. You want to make quarter to half turns, let it stabilize for a few minutes and you'll notice that it's going to take a few minutes of up and down, and then the valve is going to settle down.

Also something to understand when you're adjusting any expansion valve out there - okay, you typically don't want to do it on a system or any thermostatic expansion valve. You don't want to do it on a system that is not somewhat close to the the actual set point of the box. What the box was designed to maintain, if you have a walk-in cooler, that's 70 degrees, because you just turned it on: don't go to the expansion valve and expect to set the superheat on it when it's that high in temp, because that valve is just wide open. Overloaded trying to do what it's supposed to do, which is bring the temperature of the coil down so that way it can properly regulate the superheat.

So you want to be within five to ten degrees of set point uh before you start adjusting on the valves and just give it time after you make adjustments. Okay, all right, let's see what else we got going on inside here um, let me see who's a better pupper, my dog or miss molly. Oh, i don't know, i don't know who's who's, uh, i'm sure steve uh, where he's referring to steve lav, steve labs. Another content creator he's a plumber and air conditioning technician somewhere on the east coast.

I think maybe massachusetts, because someone said mass and steve lav has a character on there. His dog is molly. If you guys haven't watched steve lab you're, hiding under a rock because steve's one of the biggest content creators out there, so definitely go check him out. Okay, he's a character he's a funny.

Dude um and i've laughed pretty hard watching some of his stuff when he might get some of the things he says to some of his customers. I could never do that, but it makes me crack up when he'll just flat out to a customer's face say: are you stupid, like it's just like what, but it's just hilarious, sometimes listening to that guy talk, okay, all right! So um, let's see i had a couple videos the last week. One of them was really really popular. I got lots to talk about that video, okay um.

I want to start out with something, though, is mike had emailed me, and he asked me about the new awef compliant head pressure, control valves and he was concerned about him. There's been a lot of concern in industry, uproar about the head pressure, control valves that are in a lot of the new equipment. Okay understand something heat: craft refrigeration is not the one that decided to put a hundred or 150 psi bypass head pressure control valve in their condensing unit. Okay, what they're doing is they're trying to meet regulations set by the federal government for walk-in, coolers and freezers.

Typically, that have square footage of 3 000 square feet or less. They have new energy regulations, they have to meet, they call it the aof, awef annual, walk-in efficiency factor right, and it's just some new regulations by the department of energy energy that basically says that this equipment has to meet certain energy guidelines. Now the department of energy doesn't say that they have to put in these head pressure control valves, but they basically give them a criteria that they have to meet that reduces energy consumption of most of this equipment. Okay, so on refrigeration equipment, how can we reduce the energy consumption? Well, we can put on variable speed motors, ecm motors, different things like that two speed motors they do that, but then, on top of that, what they can do is they can reduce the operating current of the compressor.

Well. In order to do that, one of the ways you can do that is, you can float the head pressure down or reduce the operating head pressure on those refrigeration systems. So these manufacturers are being put up against a wall and they're they're being told your equipment that you manufacture has to meet certain guidelines and they have to figure out a way to do it. So they add ecm motors to it.

They oversize condensers and they start doing different things, to try to reduce the condensing temperature of the equipment, adding head pressure, control valves that have very low bypass pressures, really low. That scares a lot of people that don't know how to work with it. With that being said, that equipment needs to be sized appropriately. You need to have very closely matched evaporator and condensers you need to.

As far as btu output goes okay, you need to have a properly sized expansion valve. Now it's very important that we understand that in the past a lot of people used to throw expansion, valves on systems and just say: ah, this should work. You know well with this new equipment that we have these days. We have to be pretty right on when it comes to sizing the components for our equipment and when we have these issues with the refrigeration equipment, this is actually what i was just talking to.

My buddy brett about is just some of the things we have to consider. Okay, when it comes to size and expansion valves, you have to pay attention to uh the coldest condensing temp it's going to operate at and the highest condensing temp it's going to operate at okay and we have to size that valve that way it can operate properly. Within those guidelines, so if you have a really cold ambient, you need to be concerned and make sure that your valves are sized correctly. So mike.

You asked me what you're going to do in your c and he was concerned about these new condensing units he's buying. First and foremost, what you need to understand is if you're buying a new awef, compliant refrigeration, uh condensing unit. You need to make sure you understand if your expansion valve is sized appropriately okay, you need to make sure and do that research there's lots of different methods. Sporlin has a new tech document.

I showed it last week. I don't know where it is, so i'm going to be very unprepared to show it again this week, um, i don't have it right here. Let's see there we go spoiling, has a new tech document that makes it a little bit easy. It's a 500-10 awef and it breaks it down.

Basically, they take the the common factors of how equipment is manufactured and you basically can follow that chart and for the most part, it'll help you to size. Your valves appropriately, okay, but you can also get into the nitty-gritty. Sporelin has their virtual engineer program. You can go to the website.

You can input all the information, the pressure drop across your distributor, the liquid line temperature, the evaporator temperature, the liquid line pressure, all that different stuff and it'll help you to calculate a valve that falls and will operate properly within specs. On that equipment also, these days we have a lot of new regulations that come into play when it comes to using different refrigerants, okay, so they're trying to reduce global warming and different things like that, so they're getting rid of a lot of refrigerant. So, for instance, here in southern california, for the last two years now, it's actually technically illegal to install a new refrigeration system with 404, a refrigerant, okay, you're - not supposed to do that. You can still use systems with 404, but once you have to make major repairs to them technically you're supposed to remove the 404 and convert it to a a refrigerant that has you know all the fancy numbers that meets global warming requirements and different things like that.

Okay, so we're having to make refrigerants that have higher glides right, so so those are things we need to consider and be concerned about with that being said, with these high glide refrigerants, like, for instance, 448a is the refrigerant. I've been using a lot and it has a really big glide to it. Okay, that's the difference in saturation. Temperatures from the entrance and the exit of the coil can be huge, okay and the um.

The capacity is going to change on some of that. So we have to understand that we don't just throw 448a in a system and say we're good. You have to make sure so on 448a. For the most part, your condensing unit is going to put out less capacity in the summertime, but your evaporator is going to put out more capacity or have more capacity.

Okay, so uh the the stamped number on the back of the model number for your condenser. Your evaporator might be a 14 000 btu evaporator right with 404a. Well, you might get 15 000 btus out of it or something like that with 440 8a. So you can size accordingly on that, and you have to look at the performance data of the equipment to know how it's going to operate and you have to size.

Accordingly, i highly suggest that people look into engineering programs to size. The equipment heat craft has one. They have a new program uh on the the heatcraft hub, and this is something i was actually having a conference call with some guys from heatcraft heatcraft refrigeration, one of the major manufacturers out there and we were having a conference call - and we were talking about a Few things - and i didn't know this, but heat craft - has a new app. You can download an app, it's called the i believe.

It's the heat craft hub and something really cool about it that i don't think many other people if anybody at all is doing is that their app has load calculation software built into it. So you can do a load calculation on a walk-in cooler on your phone. That's really cool um. I hope more manufacturers start following that.

That's really cool uh, russell refrigeration, all those different companies. They all have great load. Calculation programs online that'll, help you to size equipment and make sure that it's matched appropriately so um, but mike again to get back because i went off on a big tangent about that. To get back to your question, what do you do when these these head pressure control valves? Are, you know bypassing way too low for what you think is low? Well, you've got to size your valves right, but then also you need to understand that it's not always going to be okay to buy off the shelf equipment from a distributor.

Sometimes you might have to get an engineer involved and say: hey, you know what i'm operating this in an extremely low ambient. It might be negative 20 degrees outside what what things do i need to do and they might add extra components. You see, supply houses, sell heat, craft, refrigeration equipment right. You can buy a condensing unit with all the all the components that are the most popular components in it, but you can also go to heat craft and say i need this specked out appropriately to have receiver heaters to have this or that you know you can Spec equipment appropriately, and it's not just what the distributor has okay, so keep that in mind if you're operating in weird conditions really low, ambience and different things like that, there might be some things you need to consider.

We as technicians need to do a better job of understanding, what's really going on and not just necessarily trusting the supply house when they say yeah. This should be good. I hate the word should should is such a cop-out? I hate that word. I don't want to know if it should be good.

I want to know that it will be good. That's what i want to know when i buy something - and i say, is this the right valve yeah. It should be fine, that's not what i want to hear and i'm not going to trust you anymore. Okay, i have trust issues, but i like to get my hands on things and do the research myself and i'm certainly not an expert at all.

But i like to research things i like to figure out. Why is it that we put a head pressure control valve on a system? Why is it that we have a fan, cycling, control on a system? Why what's the point, why do we need to maintain a head pressure? Well, it's because, especially with the older thermostatically controlled expansion valves, they had to have a certain pressure differential across the valve right and i've explained this a million times. You know again. This is a rudimentary explanation that expansion valve needs to see refrigerant, going through it at a certain flow rate, and if it doesn't have that certain flow rate going through it, then the valve's mechanical action that opens and closes it isn't going to happen at the right Times and therefore it's not going to maintain the evaporator superheat that it's supposed to do so we we call that a pressure differential, okay, but i use flow because a lot of people understand that easier.

We need to have a set pressure differential across that expansion valve the liquid pressure needs to be x and the outlet of that valve needs to be x in order for it to work and fluctuate properly and open and close properly. Now we have newer expansion valves that have the ability of operating with the lower pressure differentials across the valve. We have electronic expansion valves. That's really critical.

With a lot of these new regulations, you're going to find that electronic expansion valves are going to be more and more necessary and for me, that's a struggle because i'm an old school technician that doesn't necessarily like new technology, i'm i'm stubborn and having to sell systems With exv's - and it's like - oh wow, you know this particular brand of exv. I see the the stator or the coil go bad quite often, and i hate to sell my customer that particular brand, because it's going to go back, but i mean we have to start using more of this technology because we need it right. The cool thing, though, is, is that we also have that technology right and we also have the ability to um have a compressor that has variable capacity. That is really cool.

All right. We used to have mechanical variable capacity, where you'd have an unloader on it or you'd have a valve that would inject refrigerant into different places in the compressor and different things like that inject hot gas and different stuff right. But now you can actually have a variable speed compressor, but you introduce all kinds of new stuff right, because a variable speed compressor is going to need a vfd. A variable frequency drive to drive that compressor to to turn it on and speed it up and slow.

It down well, what happens when you use vfd is. I show it a lot in my area when you don't have proper power conditioning proper power protection for those vfds, you have a high failure rate on vfds, so it's not just a simple, throw a variable. Speed. Compressor on there, it's not as simple as that, so we as contractors and technicians need to understand that there's limitations to technology too, and we have to think about the big picture.

You have to think about things. You don't just go out there and throw on well. Unfortunately, a lot of people do, manufacturers have been forced, and so they just sell equipment and contractors aren't really thinking about this kind of stuff. But i've installed - probably i don't know 15 to 20 carrier package units right and i'm not dogging on carrier, but i've installed.

15 to 20 carrier package units - maybe you know 100 linux package units in the last couple years and they all have variable frequency drives in them now and we've seen failure after failure, after failure on the vfds and sure there's a cause, the vfd probably didn't just Go bad on its own. It was probably murdered right uh, just like my buddy brett, and i were just talking on the phone about how compressors get murdered right. Compressors, typically, don't go bad. Something causes them to go bad right and it's understanding what causes those things to go: bad understanding, the limitations of the technology and knowing what we as technicians and business owners, have to do to make the technology work at its full peak.

You know uh efficiency or whatever right. We have to put power conditioning on this equipment. We have to have you know, phase monitors and voltage monitors that look for brown outs and high voltage situations, and you know vfds really shouldn't be installed in the package unit in the high heat area in the heating season and low humidity right and then the really High humidity and low uh temperature high moisture areas in the summertime right, because you know it causes these things to fail in a perfect world. The vfd is not installed in a package unit and i'm not blaming the manufacturers because they're the same thing with the doe requirements and the awef requirements.

These manufacturers are the ones, see they're, not pushing it on the contractors, they're pushing it on the manufacturers. It's our job as the contractors to look at this equipment and say that's going to fail. We should probably talk the customer into relocating that to a better place. I bet you if, on these package units that we have vfds for the indoor blower motors that constantly fail, i bet you anything if we took those vfds out of the package unit had them properly installed in a mechanical room downstairs in a conditioned space, or even Just a moderately conditioned space right and had some sort of power protection on them that the failure rate on those drives would drop, but unfortunately, they're installed in the worst places, because the manufacturers have no other choice.

They're up against a wall, they're told you have to make equipment that meets these requirements and we, as consumers, demand cheaper, cheaper, cheaper, but yet they have to meet these these things. So therefore, they have to do what they have to do to be able to stay in business and make this equipment so also at the same time, there is also manufacturers out there that are just plain dumb and make dumb equipment. So it's our job to also know which manufacturers those are i'm not gon na name names but hey in the chat right now name some of those manufacturers that make the dumbest equipment you can ever think of. Okay, i'm not gon na agree or disagree, but i know when i see him, you guys know which manufacturers there are there's some of those guys out there that just make the dumbest equipment throw it in the chat right now.

Let me know what you guys. Think, okay, all right so now that i just spent um what how long did i spend talking about one uh, a ridiculous amount of time talking about one thing: uh looks like 40 minutes talking about one thing: let's keep going: okay, um! Let me see what else we got in here. What was the dirtiest ice machine? I have ever worked on um. It was at a mexican restaurant and the machines were just completely black with growing mold on the inside, and i probably have pictures on a hard drive somewhere.

I just don't know where those pictures are. It was long before i did videos um. It was a fancy chain, mexican restaurant, that is across the country. I don't do work for them anymore, but they were big in the 80s and then they kind of petered off in the 90s and were just kind of riding the wave into the 2000s and they damn or darn near damn near went completely under.

But they kind of resurrected themselves got rid of a lot of the baggage that they had within their company because they decided they wanted to become one of these giant companies, and this is interesting guys right. So we have all these companies out there right now. There's a trend going on in the residential side and it's starting to bleed over into the commercial side where consolidation, oh we're, going to become the biggest company out there, we're going to grab up every company out there and we're going to become these giant companies. Um yeah - that's happened a lot too in the past and most of the time the consolidations don't work out too well, and it hurts things more than anything right.

I'm not saying that's necessarily going to happen on the hvac side, but i saw these restaurants do that, where they just i'm, going to buy up every restaurant and we're going to be the biggest restaurant chain in the country. And then things don't really work out and they start just getting rid of these restaurants and getting rid of them and downsizing and becoming just normal restaurant operations that they can maintain i'm kind of curious. If that's, what is going to happen with all this consolidation? That's going on in hvac, it's kind of scary when you think about it, because most of the consolidation that's going on in hvac is not hvac operators buying another operator, it's private equity coming in and saying. Well, we want a piece of that pie, so we're going to throw a bunch of money and buy a bunch of companies and then we're going to hire someone to run all those companies and sometimes the people they hire to run.

Those companies don't even have anything to do with hvac they're, just a banker that thinks. Oh, we got to make profit, so you guys need to do this and yeah. That's that's a whole nother disaster coming in the future, so get ready for that. One all right! So let me cross those couple things i talked about off my list.

Let me cross that stuff off of my list um. So recent video that i did uh this last week, uh sunday actually yesterday, was a uh air conditioner, that it actually happened all the way back in june, but it was an air conditioner that i had to change an evaporator on um. I just saw the 98 deville. Thank you so very much for that super chat.

Man. He says smash the thumbs up button. Please do it guys it definitely helps out the stream uh 98 deville thanks so much for that super chat. It's much appreciated.

It definitely helps out so thank you very much bud, okay um. So recent video, we changed an evaporator on a carrier package unit and i made a mistake guys guys, i'm human, we all make mistakes and there was a lot of people that criticized me in the chat or in the comments about the mistake that i made. If nobody makes mistakes or if they say they're, not making mistakes, they're lying it's what we do when we find the mistake, if we can actually catch ourselves, making the mistake and remedying it right. In my situation, i realized right quick.

I went to go put service gauges on the carrier package unit right and when i put the service gauges on there, they did not depress the schraders properly, so the system was flat. What are the odds? Those it was like a turn of events. What are the odds that the high and low side both didn't depress the schraders right? They were both reading zero psi go figure, so i started to do a leak search. I mean i added a little bit of refrigerant and some nitrogen to the system.

So that way i could do a leak search and then all of a sudden, as i was getting ready to add the nitrogen boom, the pressures went up and i didn't really catch it at first and then i caught it after i added some nitrogen to the System the system had the full refrigerant charge in it and i dumped nitrogen on top of it. Okay, so i ran into a problem, but i caught it and i remedied the mistake. I showed a cool little trick. I'd never done that before, but i figured it would work and i was able to get rid of the nitrogen out of the refrigerant cylinder by simply putting it outside letting the cylinder heat up to the ambient temperature.

And then looking at the pressure temperature relationship and checking the pressures and the saturation temperature and that saturation temperature was higher than the outdoor ambient temperature, so i removed the nitrogen until the saturation temperature of the r22 refrigerant met the outdoor ambient conditions, and i gave it Time to stabilize out - and i was able to save that refrigerant, okay, um, so i'm human - i make mistakes, that's life! That's what we do. We all make mistakes that happens to be a failure of the core max fitting the cormax fitting are kind of like a a controversial little fitting in our industry, and they really do cause a lot of problems. Okay, so whenever possible, i replace cormax fittings. So, whenever i'm working on systems i'll replace them in hindsight, i was going to replace it on that system.

Even if i had to make a repair and it was - and i didn't contaminate the refrigerant - i would have changed the coremax fittings. I suggest that you guys any time you open up a system, and you take all the refrigerant out if it has coremax fittings on it, change those coremax fittings, okay and also keep in mind. I was thinking about something when you use the cormax fitting they're a high flow schrader they're, a different type of schrader valve right and you use schrader depressors right because sometimes they have those mechanical schrader depressors that you turn and it pushes a plunger down. Don't max those mechanical schrader depressors out because you're gon na stress that schrader to the max - and you don't want to do that so just crack it all right, um ike! Thank you so very much for uh being a channel supporter.

I really appreciate that bud and ramon c. Thank you very much for that super chat. Man that is awesome. Um ike reminds me just seeing his name right there i was reaching out to ike.

I can. I have talked a few times um. He he operates a discord server. That's technically the hvacr videos discord server, it's a cool little place for everybody to go, hang out and stuff.

I always do this. I do not have the uh the discord link as usual um. Let me see yeah. I send me the discord link in messenger right now.

I think i can pull that up and i'll shoot the discord link over if my facebook ever opens up. Let's give it a second here. Facebook is not loading for me, so anyways um, so uh ike is helping me build a computer, so i've got a bunch of computer parts, actually stacked up there right now and i'm hoping that i get everything this weekend and maybe we'll uh we'll be building that Computer this weekend so we'll see it's the first time i've ever done it. I kind of talked me into it and i think we might be able to figure this out so yeah i did get my messenger pulled up ike.

So if you get an opportunity, send me a the discord link over to my messenger and i'll try to post it in here right now, um so that'll be something cool for me to do. Never done it before we'll see. My computer is maxed to the limit when i'm editing, videos and doing streams and stuff, and i have plans for the future, so i need to go ahead and update this stuff um. Let me see what else we got in here: yeah there we go right there.

Actually, i might even have it, i actually have it right here. I found it in our chat already, so i'm gon na throw the discord link if you guys aren't already a member of the discord server. It's just a really cool chat room, so um and uh lots of different channels and different things. So this is a link to the discord server popping up in there right now.

Now, in all fairness, i'm not on the discord server. Very often i pop in there every once in a while, but it's a cool little thing where everybody can kind of communicate and stuff, and you know it's just a different way than facebook to communicate so definitely check it out. If you guys don't already. Okay, all right um cool yeah - i just put it in there ike, so i got it all right um, so i'm gon na close that out and then yeah, let's go ahead and get to this so um in that video that i repaired that package unit, i Answered this all the time guys, but i got a bunch of questions in there.

Why, in the heck, did i repair that package unit and why not sell them a new unit, because the customer bottom line didn't want a unit? That's it um. Mr p, i really appreciate that super chat man and he said my mistake fix was gold yeah. You know i try to own up to it now. I asked a question and i'd like to know what you guys think in the chat too.

Okay, do me a favor guys smash the like button, because the likes and the views need their viewers need to be aligned to be able to help this channel get known a little bit more okay. So i asked a question in the video because i accidentally put nitrogen in there, so if i was not able to save that refrigerant, would that have been my fault and is it fair for me if i had, if i wasn't able to save that refrigerant, would It be fair for me to charge the customer for the refrigerant now my opinion. I said it in the video was yes, i would have charged the customer for the refrigerant if i had to sell them new refrigerant, because that stupid schrader core. I didn't put that on there and that thing had failed mistakes happen.

Of course, there's could have been things that i could have done, but you know what life happens so that was our 22 refrigerant heck. No, i wasn't going to eat that cost. I would have charged the customer for that r22 refrigerant now, if it was a blatant mistake, if i stuck a screw through a condenser and it leaked out the entire charge, that would have been my fault. That was something that i just stupid me.

You know, but that stupid cormax fitting. That's not my fault man, you know that's the way. I see it, but i'm curious. What do you guys think in the chat you know um? Let me see why don't hvac companies pay much fresh out of school, peter ortega, so in my area, peter, an hvac technician, fresh out of school will make anywhere from 15 to 18 an hour.

Why isn't that? I, as a contractor, will not pay more to a technician fresh out of school because you're not making me money, and i have to make an investment into you, because just because you went to school as a cert as and became a certified technician doesn't mean that You actually have field experience and know what you're doing so when you're fresh out of school. You still have to learn, and i have to take that on so i'm currently training an apprentice right now and he's doing really good. But that is a gamble for me because he works with me every day and i pay him and typically, as an apprenticeship you're, not charging very much for those technicians. Sometimes i might charge for my apprentice if he helps me out in a certain situation, but for the most part, i'm not charging for his time.

So i'm training him teaching him and it's an investment that i'm making into him. At the same time, i'm still paying him just not a full technician's wages. So it takes time for me to be able to get my investment to a point that you start generating revenue for the company. Now, once you start generating revenue for the company, then of course you need to get paid well, but it takes time to learn.

So you have to earn your keep. Basically, you have to apprentice and you have to learn and then they'll become a point when you become a journeyman technician or whatever they call it in your area and then, of course, you deserve to be paid appropriately right. Hvac technicians that are experienced in my area can make anywhere from 25 to 45 dollars an hour in restaurant refrigeration, depending on their experience and their skill level. Anything past 35, you're, typically going to start taking a supervisor position or a management position you get into heavy commercial heavy industrial.

You can make more than that. You get into sales on the residential side you can make more than that. It all just depends. Okay, it's about the area you go into all right.

Let's see what else we got in here. Um, an aviation mechanic fresh out of school makes 37 an hour top out paying seven years at 54, an hour at delta, lax yeah. I i don't know man. I you know i you're not doing what you're not learning enough in school doing hvac it's going to take time.

It's going to take time to where you start generating revenue for the company and the company's gon na have to put time in you um to to learn now, it'd, be one thing: if you came out of hvac school, a legit mechanic that could fix everything he Touches well heck yeah. You deserve to be paid, but if you don't know everything yet it's going to take time and i can't pay out of my own pocket in apprentice 37 an hour so that way, six months from now, he can decide. He doesn't want to work for me anymore, because the next guy gave him a dollar an hour more raise, and then i lost all that money that i paid him the whole time while he wasn't making me any money that can be a struggle. So it's a it's! It's a delicate balance.

We got to do okay, all right um. So why didn't my customer replace that equipment? Because i don't know it's not my not my decision, i'm not there to convince the customer to replace it. It's different on the residential and commercial side, and i can argue that i don't even think on the residential side. You should be convincing a customer to replace something, but that's a whole nother argument.

For another day i give my customer the facts. This is how much it's going to be to fix. This is how much it's going to be replaced. I strongly suggest you replace that's my opinion, but it's in their hands.

They make the decision to repair it.